04/24/2026
Love puppy culture!
If a puppy can hold his urine in a crate for a two hour nap, that does not mean that he can hold his urine when awake and active for two hours. We do cover this in the house and crate training section of our puppy course, (link in comments) but here is the jist of it.
A student wrote in with the "problem" that her puppy would go outside and p*e, and then come back inside the house and, ten minutes later, p*e again. Now, this "double and triple p**p and p*e" is a developmental stage and we do cover it in the puppy course. It's totally normal, it takes a while for them to learn to and/or be able to evacuate their bladder and bowels completely in one shot.
So I reminded her where the course material was on that and suggested she review it again.
And she replied to me, well, no it's not that because we are already onto the "Puppy's First Kegels" and the puppy can take a nap in a crate for two hours with no distress, so it can't be that the puppy has to go ten minutes after he goes outside.
Here's the thing. A puppy's ability to hold it is going to depend very much on context...that's what the "Toilet Tells" and "Potty Predictors" in the course are about. When a puppy (or a human) sleeps, they (we) produce an antidiuretic hormone that suppresses urine production.
That's why you can sleep 8 hours a night without needing to get up and urinate, or maybe urinate once. But if you work 8 hours in an office you will be urinating many times during the day.
Just an aside, some people don't produce a lot of that antidiuretic hormone and they need to get up many times a night to p*e, but normally you won't need to get up many times a night to p*e.
Yet another aside, as you (and your dog) age, you often will produce less of that antidiuretic hormone at night, which is why older people and dogs often need to go more frequently.
But the main point here is that sleeping in a crate is a biological context that is very, very, different from being awake and active.
And it's completely normal for a 15 week old puppy to p*e outside and then come inside and p*e again within a few minutes, especially if he's playing or excited...those states of emotional arousal stimulate the bladder and urine production and make it harder for the puppy to hold it.
I'm putting aside specific advice for house training because that's what the course is about. But I want to reassure puppy owners that:
🐶Double p*es are normal,
🐶A puppy's ability to hold urine depends on the context, and
🐶You can't set the bar for how long a puppy can hold urine by how long he can nap without needing to get up and p*e🐕.
